


Doctor, Doctor

by aceoftwos, MintChocolateLeaves



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: (incidentally that's the alt title of this fic coined by my other wife bibi), Fluff, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Polypanic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14138418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceoftwos/pseuds/aceoftwos, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintChocolateLeaves/pseuds/MintChocolateLeaves
Summary: Most days Shinichi just wants to finish his shift, go home, and binge bad TV with his roommate. Crushing on notoriously awful patient Kuroba Kaito? Not part of the plan. (Crushing on his sarcastically observant roommate wasn't part of the plan either, but that's actually the easy part.)





	Doctor, Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> a huge goddamn thanks to mint, my soft murder wife, for helping out with the medical knowledge. this whole thing would be horribly inaccurate if not for her. admittedly, she also ruined a shitton of my plot points with RealityTM but hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles. anyways. hope you enjoy reading!

Working in the Emergency Room fucking _sucks_. Long hours, late hours, and lots of coffee. It’s only been half a year. Shinichi already wishes he’d gone into acting like his mother wanted.

 _Almost_.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters.

“Suck it up, Shinichi- _kun_ ,” Shiho say bluntly.

“It’s two in the morning, Ai,” Shinichi whines. She rolls her eyes, either at the tone or the nickname. They’d met an online forum years ago and her username, aichan48, had stuck. Partially because Shinichi likes it but mostly because it used to annoy her. “I have a class at seven.”

“You’ll live,” she says, to all appearances heartless. Only years of friendship clues Shinichi into the slight softening of her voice. Even then, it’s _very_ slight, maybe because her class is even earlier.

“But I won’t enjoy it,” Shinichi mumbles. Louder, he asks, “Bad idea #389. Scale of one to ten. Injecting coffee directly into my veins.”

“Seven.”

“Only a seven?”

“You’d stop whining,” Shiho says bluntly, smirking as Shinichi splutters. He starts laughing after a moment.

“I—! Yeah, okay, fair.”

* * *

 

“Your boyfriend’s back,” Shiho calls over her shoulder.

“And I’m gonna get in trouble,” Shinichi says unenthusiastically. “Hey, ya!”

“Go back to 1963,” she replies, passing the substantial chart to him. “Here, it’s your turn this time.”

“What? It was my turn last time!”

“Yes, but you lost our weekly bet.” Shinichi groans and takes the chart, regretting his decision to go to the bar last night. Not that he’d had much choice after Ran decided to join in.

He could never say no to her, an unfortunate side effect of being constantly busy. After he’d had to cancel on Ran’s birthday and damn near _beg_ for his life, he simply decided that he would always say yes to her if he could. And it’s not like going drinking with his friends was a huge bother… At least, it wasn’t.

Until Shiho dared him to a drinking contest.

It was much too late when Shinichi realized that she meant to pit him against Sera, Ran’s partner and the resident heavyweight drinker. No one, not even Ran, had been able to drink her under the table.

Shinichi almost didn’t make it into work that afternoon. He still has a hangover, his muscles are screaming at him for sleeping on the couch instead of in his bed, and he’s dehydrated. Shiho _did_ get him a bottle of water when he got here, never mind that she threw it at his head and ruined an otherwise nice gesture.

And now he has to deal with the nightmare that is Kuroba Kaito. Fidgety, whiny, prone to ignoring instructions and picking at bandages. It’s shaping up to be the start of a stellar shift.

“What happened this time, Kuroba- _san_?”

“How many times do I have to tell you to call me Kaito?”

“At least once more,” Shinichi replies, suppressing a smile. For all his flaws as a patient, Kuroba _was_ charming. “It says here you fractured your humerus? I thought you magicians were careful of your hands.”

“That’s not very _humorous_ , Shinichi- _kun_.”

“Very funny, Kuroba- _san_.”

Kuroba grins sheepishly, swinging his feet back and forth under the bed. He’s cradling his right arm to his chest, barely wincing for how much pain he must be in. Shinichi’s had his arm broken before, twice, and he knows that it hurts like a bitch.

“Yeah, okay, let me see it.”

“Careful…”

“Oh please,” Shinichi mutters, prodding gently at the arm, “have you ever known me to be anything but?”

“I wouldn’t be so concerned if you let me get to know you personally…”

And there’s those damn eyes of his, the look that always gets Shinichi to sneak a lollipop or a sticker to him at the end of every visit, even though he’s way, _way_ over the age limit. Those eyes spell doom and destruction for Shinichi’s willpower, never mind the fact that he can’t budge on this particular point.

“You know it’s against the rules, Kuroba- _san_.”

“No exceptions?”

“No exceptions,” Shinichi says firmly. He knows that all too well. Shiho’s had to remind him of it more than a few times in between the wine and the whining, the eye rolling alone speaks volumes. It’s not _his_ fault Kuroba is hot. “Sorry, Kuroba.”

“Hey, you dropped the honorific,” Kuroba says, grinning. “See, I knew you liked me. We’ll get there.”

Damn him, he’s fucking right. Shinichi does like him. Too much. He needs to change shifts or something, anything to stop running into Kuroba all the goddamn time. Even if Shiho lords it over him forever.

“Don’t be too proud of yourself, we all make mistakes...”

“Well…” After a moment of hesitation, Kuroba asks, “Was it a mistake?”

Shinichi wants to say ‘no’ because on a personal level it was a deliberate choice, knows he should say ‘yes’ because he really can’t. Is kissing a hot guy a good enough reason to risk his career?  

“It doesn’t look like you’ll need a cast,” Shinichi says, pointedly ignoring the question to examine Kuroba’s x-rays. “I’ll get you a sling and prescribe you something for the pain.”

“Yeah,” Kuroba says quietly, “okay.”

Shiho falls into step with him as he walks away from the bed and gently bumps their shoulder together. Shinichi lets himself lean into it for a second before pulling away and again, feeling like shit for crushing on two people at once. Sometimes, Shinichi really wonders if his life is some sort of cosmic joke.

“Careful, Shinich- _kun_ ,” Shiho says lightly, “your self-loathing is showing.”

“Bad idea #390. True or false. I… need to stay away from Kuroba Kaito.”

“You and me both.”

Shinichi isn’t sure if she meant to imply that she _also_ has a crush on Kuroba, because _that_ would be just… the best. He knows that Kuroba flirts with Shiho. And his crushes ending up with each other? Seems exactly on par with the rest of his life.

* * *

 

He doesn’t get to bring it up for another couple of days. Every day for the past week, Shiho’s been dead asleep minutes after walking in the door. Shinichi can’t really blame her, seeing as he’s been doing the exact same thing. Dissertations are the _worst_. The only upside is that he hasn’t seen Kuroba recently. Either he’s finally been driven away by Shinichi’s surly attitude and unavailability or he’s actually taking their warnings to heart and starting to be more careful.

“I’ll set up, you get the wine,” Shiho says, voice muffled under a blanket. It’s become habit for them to watch TV together whenever they both have the day off. “ _House_ or _Grey’s_?”

“You pick,” Shinichi says, knowing she’ll inevitably choose _Grey’s Anatomy_ because she’s got a thing for one of the actors. He pours them both a half-glass of some cheap wine from the supermarket down the street and puts the bottle back in the fridge, holding both glasses with one hand. “Cookies?”

“Don’t tempt me, Shinichi- _kun_.”

Shinichi sets their glasses on the table next to a tupperware container full of carrot sticks and cucumber slices, courtesy of Ran. He sends up a quiet thank you for whatever brought Ran into his life.

“So, _Grey’s_?”

“We’re only a few episodes from the end of the season,” Shiho says, chewing on a carrot stick. “Then we can switch over to _House_.”  

“Sure.” Shinichi’s pretty sure they’re not going to be switching over to _House_ anytime soon. He’s got it on good authority (Kazuha, who was typically only a few episodes ahead of them, let it slip to Hakuba who’d confusedly relayed the information to Shinichi as he was bringing a patient in) that the season ends with a massive cliff-hanger. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Shiho hits play on the remote and tosses it on the coffee table before burrowing back into her blanket and shoving her bare toes under Shinichi’s thigh. He removes them and pulls her legs across his lap, making sure to tuck her feet under the blankets.

“Rude,” Shiho mutters.

“Shut up and watch your show,” Shinichi replies.

“Brat.” Shiho reaches for her glass and takes a sip, grimacing a little at the flavor. “Cross this off the list.”

“Yeah, yeah. Got it.”

Their list, of alcohol do and don’t buys, is sitting on the table behind Shiho with a fancy little pen shaped like a beer bottle. Shinichi reaches around her and feels around for the notebook. When he can’t reach it, he leans in closer and stretches out a little further. Shiho glances at him for a moment then smirks and turns back to the screen.

“If you wanted to snuggle with me,” she says, voice just slightly mocking, “you could’ve just asked.”

Shinichi stops dead in his tracks. That… sounds almost like an invitation. But it can’t be. His life doesn’t work like that. He never gets the girl, _or_ the guy for that matter.

“Do… do you… um… do you want to… snuggle?”

Shiho says nothing, barely breathes. Shinichi pulls away slowly and watches her. Just before he can sit all the back, a hand shoots out from the pile of blankets and holds him there. Shiho isn’t looking at him. She’s carefully staring at only the screen, though Shinichi can tell she isn’t paying attention anymore. There’s a hint of red at her cheeks, what little he can make out from under her blanket cloak.

“Don’t, just… stay.”

After a moment, Shinichi settles back against her and instead of reaching for the table, hesitantly curls an arm around her shoulders. Shiho leans her cheek against his shoulder, her breath warm against his neck. Shinichi turns slightly, her lips touch his skin, and he has no idea what the hell is going on.

“What are we doing?”

“Snuggling,” Shiho says, uncertainly.

“Should we talk about this?” Shinichi’s pretty fucking sure he doesn’t want to talk about this and equally sure that they need to if they don’t want this whole… whatever it was… to blow up in their faces. “Maybe?”

“Probably,” Shiho agrees, sighing. She sinks further into the blanket and curls into him. “But not yet.”

“And Kuroba?”

“What about him?”

“Should we talk about how we both have a giant crush on him?” Shinichi traces little circles on Shiho’s skin, waiting for a reaction. She doesn’t even tense. “Just a suggestion.”

“Or we could just discuss what we’re going to do about it.”

“And _are_ we doing something about it?” When he doesn’t get an answer, he looks down. Shiho’s eyes are closed and she’s snoring softly. Shinichi tucks her head under his chin then stretches out his leg towards the coffee table and carefully presses the pause button with his big toe. That done, he sits back and closes his eyes, smiling as he drifts off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. shinichi has weird taste in music, including old af songs like the 1963 classic "my boyfriend's back" by the angels. mostly bc i unashamedly love that song and will not apologize for it. 
> 
> 2\. they're doctors, of course they watch bad medical dramas. i know literally nothing about grey's anatomy except that ai would absolutely watch it. 
> 
> 3\. kaito's gonna be a lil' upset for a while bc, like me, he had no idea being a doctor went hand in hand with so many goddamn rules. but he'll be fine. i'm gonna sort everything out, don't worry about it.


End file.
